Visa has created a crypto advisory group to help steer its clients through the world of digital currencies

• Payments firm Visa said on Wednesday it will create a crypto advisory service.
• The advisory group aims to help Visa's clients and partners in using cryptocurrencies.
• Crypto adoption has boomed this year while half of the world's central banks have looked into digital assets.

Visa is launching a new crypto advisory group to meet the needs of its partners and clients that are getting involved with the digital asset space.

The payment company's Global Crypto Advisory Practice will sit in its Visa Consulting & Analytics division, Visa said in a press release Wednesday. Visa said that its advisory group will be for financial institutions that are eager to attract or maintain customers with a crypto offering and for retail traders who are looking to delve into unique non-fungible tokens (NFTs) tied to assets as well as central banks exploring the digital space.

Visa surveyed 6,000 financial decision-makers across parts of the world and 94% were aware of crypto, according to a report they released Wednesday. The company also found that one third of its respondents directly engaged with crypto as an investment vehicle, or as a medium of exchange. 62% of that group said their use had increased over the past year. Out of the crypto owners surveyed, 40% said they would likely switch their primary bank to one that offers crypto products from one that does not within the next 12 months.

"We've seen a material shift in our clients' mindset in the last year, from a desire to explore and experiment with crypto, to actually building a strategy and product roadmap," said Carl Rutstein, the Global Head of Visa Consulting & Analytics in the statement.

Visa has not been shy when it comes to engaging with the growing crypto landscape. The company said in late September that it was looking into creating a universal payments channel to assist the global transfers of digital currencies.

In July the company partnered with 50 crypto firms to allow clients to spend their digital currencies. It even bought a $150,000 CryptoPunk non-fungible token which is unique, digital and tied to art in August.

From October 1 the company possessed $3.5 billion in digital currency transactions through its cards that are tied to crypto, Nikola Plecas, Visa's European crypto lead, told CNBC.

Cryptocurrencies have become mainstream and now all of the digital coins together have a market capitalization of $2.4 trillion, up from $563 billion a year ago, according to CoinGecko. And it's not just individuals and companies getting involved. More than half of the world's central banks are at some stage of exploring or rolling out their own official digital currencies.